Open innovation and Co-creation is the fastest emerging way to procure & supply innovation in a world of diminishing boundaries. This partnership will help both yet2.com and ideaken.com to expand their innovator solver base and get faster and better solutions for their enterprise clients. This partnership will also provide a greater opportunity for individual innovators and technology SMEs to access bigger market of innovation seekers from around the world.

Head quartered in US, yet2.com is world’s largest intellectual property exchange. ideaken.com is a leading open innovation intermediary and co-creation platform provider in Asia.

Dr. Eugene Buff, Vice President of Consulting for yet2.com, said, “Asia is a developing powerhouse of innovation that is of immense importance to the rest of the world. It’s also one of the world’s great markets for technology. yet2.com is very happy to be partnering with an organization of ideaken’s stature.”

“We look forward to a long partnership with ideaken,” said Ben DuPont, president and co-founder of yet2.com. “Innovation is not regional. Developments from Bangalore or Delhi can easily find their way to the shelves of New York or Tokyo, just as innovations from Berlin or Johannesburg may help companies in Bangalore. Organizations like ideaken and yet2.com exist to make these connections happen.”

Jayesh Badani, Founder and CEO of ideaken said “yet2.com and ideaken.com are in the business of tapping into innovative technology providers who are somewhere out there. It makes lot of sense to join forces and create a larger community of innovation seekers and innovation solvers, everybody wins this way. We help our clients collaborate to innovate; this partnership is about applying this principle to ourselves!”

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Today, every enterprise has or plans to have some sort of an idea management initiative to capture the ideas of their employees and customers. This could be because of a very strategic vision or the result of the hype about tapping into the wisdom of employees & customers. Some have mastered the art, but the rest end up being me too. Throughputs - some get as many as 150,000 ideas in a year and some just 15 from the same number of employees and customers. The effectiveness is equally extreme; some making real money from it and it becoming a main stream process for them, while others are completely clueless about the direction to navigate into.

Question is how organizations get hold of ideas that can elevate them to the next level, help them create a service or a product that could define a new market. In other words how do organizations harvest ideas which can make substantial & positive difference to the organizations’ objectives?

Part of the answer lies in following two strategies, this is with an assumption that all other operational aspects are taken care.

Before you ask for ideas

Shift your pitch from “Do you have an idea ... “ to “Do you have an idea FOR ...” Basically shift your pitch from generally asking for any idea to asking for an idea for a given challenge.

If you can’t think of a challenge then run a challenge to find a challenge, you will be surprised how many you unearth!

Stop behaving like you have the right to ask for ideas, instead create an atmosphere of co-creation.

If you do not genuinely intend to read each of the ideas received and try to figure out the intent behind each idea then stop right here (It saves your time, yes theirs too!). Often the intent of the idea provider will lead you to the ideas you are after.

After you get the ideas

Lookout for the possibility of combining two not so good ideas to get the good one out of it. Or pick up the clue to make the not so good one, a really good one.

Make the review team a mix of someone who could see the bigger picture and also someone who may not.

Refrain from judging the idea on the basis of how easy or difficult it is to implement it.

Look at the act of rewarding the person with a good idea as an act of encouraging the innovation spirit and not as an act of buying out the idea.

In short addressing the points relevant to your enterprise from list above, a well defined challenge with an incentive and a committed evaluation team could fetch you ideas which are not a dime dozen.